Why I’m starting this newsletter

Because who needs another newsletter in their life, right? I hate the clutter myself. I’m not trying to overload your inbox. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just trying to add value to your Christian walk, and that’s what I’ll try to do with each of these newsletters.

I’m not trying to waste your time. I will not put out more than one of these each week, and if there’s a week where I don’t have anything to add, I won’t even bother to send one. It will take me 10x longer to write these than it will for you to read them, so the less of your time I waste, the less of my time I waste. Like I said, I only want to use this to add some value to your Bible study.

If it doesn’t do that for you, like I said, you can unsubscribe at any time.

Why I needed this after the latest episode

If you listened to my latest episode (Bethel: The Corrupted Portal to Heaven), we were talking about how Bethel had this gateway to heaven through several books of the Old Testament, and how it was later defiled by King Jeroboam.

In case you missed it, you can listen right here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/544b0d2a

You may have heard me mention that I often have additional content that I have to (painfully) cut away to keep my episodes from going down a rabbit trail and getting away from the main point.

I hate doing that, so I decided to take some of those “rabbit trails” and share them in a newsletter format.

Which I’m happy to do! The only problem there is: that’s a pretty long newsletter. So I thought, instead of sending a big ol’ long newsletter every week or two, why not create a web archive somewhere with all the episodes and additional content, and that way the newsletter can just link you to whatever you’d like to see in the archive.

So I purchased the domain for WeirdStuffInTheBible.com. There’s nothing there right now, and I’m in the process of building the website as we speak.

And you all are the very first people on the planet to know about it!

It is my hope that in the next few weeks, I can launch that website. It will not be just a website to promote the podcast. I want it to be a source of information that people go to with questions about the, well, weird stuff in the Bible. It will include much of the same information as what’s in the podcast- just in written form- as well as numerous additional articles as well, and it’s my hope that this will bless the body of Christ by making the Bible make more sense to everyone who visits.

So that’s the story of how my podcast led to this newsletter, which led to a website, which led to a very busy weekend- and who knows what else it could lead to.

I appreciate your prayers!

And now what we’ve all been waiting for…

Rabbit Trails: Jacob and the Terebinth Tree

I’m going to assume at this point that you listened to Episode 62 about Bethel. In it, we discussed how Jacob later returned to the exact spot where he had the dream of a ladder with angels going up and down on it. This was “The Gate of Heaven,” a spiritual gate where heavenly beings could enter into our world.

Genesis 35 (verses 1-4)

God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

This story takes place right after Jacob has been living with Laban and working for him. During this time, Jacob has married both Leah and Rachel and had numerous kids with both of them.

2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. 3 Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” 4 So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.

Let’s think about the significance of this. Jacob knows he is going right to the portal to heaven. A place where God can break right here into our world. So he knows he does not want to be standing there with any idols to false gods when he appears before the portal again.

Now, why was he traveling around with these false gods in the first place? Well, his uncle Laban liked to mess around with pagan spirituality, and his daughters that Jacob married had picked up on that trait. They stole some of the idols as they left Laban’s house, and Jacob had tolerated it. But as they approach the Gate of Heaven, Jacob knows he needs to get rid of them.

Remember that many times, idols are to false gods that actually correspond to very real spiritual beings, such as the fallen Sons of God or demons, and so when someone sacrifices to a false god, they may be sacrificing to a literal demon. Furthermore, these demonic entities or fallen angels, whatever you’d prefer to call them, are given jurisdiction over other sectors of the earth. That is why these idols here are referred to as “foreign gods.” They are idols to gods from other lands, and they have no place in Israel, and Jacob is cognizant enough to know he shouldn’t bring them right into the city of the House of God, the portal to Heaven.

Which makes it a little interesting that Jacob didn’t just outright destroy the idols. He buries them under a tree- a terebinth tree. So I thought, what is the significance of terebinth trees? So I checked out a concordance and terebinths are often associated with worship just about every time they come up; sometimes worship to God, but also worship to false gods. For example,

Hosea 4:13 says

They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar and terebinth, where the shade is pleasant. Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery.

So while the text doesn’t explicitly state this, I believe Jacob was sinning by burying these idols under a terebinth tree instead of simply destroying them. I’ll explain more in a minute, but let’s read what happened next in Genesis 35 as Jacob approached Bethel.

(Genesis 35:5-8)

5 And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. 6 And Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, 7 and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. 8 And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon-bacuth.

A few more name references here: Jacob adds another El to Bethel and calls this place the God of Bethel- or “God’s House of God”- which was perhaps a little too redundant because this name doesn’t stick in scripture. They’ll go back to calling it just “Bethel” in a minute.

But also here, a woman named Deborah dies. She is buried under an oak tree before the story proceeds, and this is a very strange verse to me because you could remove it from the narrative and feel like you’re not missing anything.

Does that mean the detail is unimportant? Quite the opposite! Here’s a good Bible study tip: many stories in the Bible include some random verse that feels like it could have been left out of the story without missing anything. We often ignore those details. Yet when you dig down to discover its meaning, you often find out that the meaning of the whole story centers around that verse.

So if I could just spend a moment here: who was Deborah? She had only been referenced once before back in Genesis 24 or 25. She was Jacob’s mother’s servant, a close friend of the family, and surely someone who had been significant in Jacob’s life. She was someone who had been involved in raising Jacob and Esau, a close part of the family. Like Batman had Alfred, Jacob had Deborah. And here, she dies, and so Jacob buries her under an oak and calls the spot “Allon-bacuth,” or “The Oak of Weeping.”

I also looked up the significance of oaks in the Bible, and in my opinion, oaks generally carry an attitude of defiance. Not 100% of the time, but typically if you read about an oak tree, there is some act of rebellion going on. Absalom, the rebellious son of David, was killed in an oak tree. I was studying for my next episode in I Kings 13 just this week where the old prophet who tricked the young prophet into disobeying God was sitting under an oak tree. (I covered that weird story already).

This detail stood out to me because this is the second time in five verses that the Bible has Jacob burying something under a tree. Why is this happening? The text doesn’t explicitly say this, but I believe Jacob was being punished right here because he had sinned by burying the idols under the terebinth tree. It’s like God is saying, “Since you tried to hid your sin under a tree in defiance to me, I am taking something you love and making you leave it under a tree.” Jacob has come before God with a hidden sin in his heart, but of course, no sin is truly hidden from God.

So that’s my personal theory on that. You can take it for what it’s worth. The Bible certainly does not dwell on this, so I’m making a bit of an assumption here. But I think it could be instructive to us on how seriously God takes it when we enter into His presence.

Entering God’s presence can be a very very good thing when done with the right motives and in the right way, and a very very bad thing when done with the wrong motives or in the wrong way. I have an episode coming up in the next few months about Uzzah and why he was killed which will demonstrate this truth as well.

Thank you for being a listener!

It’s a pure joy to put these episodes together. The positive comments many have left- especially you all- have motivated me to see what this “ministry” can do to benefit more people, and again, your prayers are appreciated as I seek to put together this website.

And when it’s ready, you all will be the first to know!

-Luke Taylor

[email protected]